Tharoor Shashi Quotes & Sayings

Resolutions aren't self-executing. Somebody has to provide the soldiers, take the risks, risk their blood and their treasure to go out and implement such a resolution. — Shashi Tharoor

Diplomacy is much like the "lovemaking of elephants", which is accompanied with a lot of bellowing and other sound effects, but no one can be sure of the consequences for at least the next two years — Shashi Tharoor

The notion of 'world leadership' is a curiously archaic one. The very phrase is redolent of Kipling ballads and James Bondian adventures. What makes a country a world leader? Is it population, in which case India is on course to top the charts, overtaking China as the world's most populous country by 2034? — Shashi Tharoor

In Indian culture, the woman of the house - the embodiment of the family's honor - treasures her gold jewelry both as her soundest asset and as the symbol of her status. — Shashi Tharoor

Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics? — Shashi Tharoor

minorityhood is a state of mind, Mr. Diggs. It is a sense of powerlessness, of being out of the mainstream, of being here on sufferance. I refuse to let others define me that way. I tell my fellow Muslims: No one can make you a minority without your consent. — Shashi Tharoor

The Internet is emblematic of an era in which what happens in Southeast Asia or southern Africa - from democratic advances to deforestation to the fight against aids - can affect Americans. As has been observed about water pollution, we all live downstream now. — Shashi Tharoor

flaunting the Kohinoor on the Queen Mother's crown in the Tower of London is a powerful reminder of the injustices perpetrated by the former imperial power. Until it is returned - at least as a symbolic gesture of expiation - it will remain evidence of the loot, plunder and misappropriation that colonialism was really all about. Perhaps that is the best argument for leaving the Kohinoor where it emphatically does not belong - in British hands. — Shashi Tharoor

The joke is that one Bengali is a poet, two Bengalis is an argument, three Bengalis is a political party, — Shashi Tharoor

Though the euphoria surrounding Barack Obama's election last week as President-elect has not yet begun to subside, it is already time to recognise that the most important challenge facing the next U.S. president is to restore America's standing in the eyes of the world. — Shashi Tharoor

(The Hindu's first issue counted a grand total of eighty copies, printed with 'one rupee and eight annas' of borrowed money by a group of four law students and two teachers). In — Shashi Tharoor

Western dictionaries define secularism as absence of religion but Indian secularism does not mean irreligiousness.It means profusion of religions. — Shashi Tharoor

India is my country, and in that sense my outrage is personal. — Shashi Tharoor

Hinduism, with its openness, its respect for variety, its acceptance of all other faiths, is one religion that should be able to assert itself without threatening others. — Shashi Tharoor

The Beijing Olympics were an exercise in Chinese soft power. Americans have the 'Voice of America' and the Fulbright scholarships. But, the fact is, in fact, that probably Hollywood and MTV and McDonalds have done more for American soft power around the world than any specifically government activity. — Shashi Tharoor

Global challenges also require global solutions, and few indeed are the situations in which the United States or any other country can act completely alone. — Shashi Tharoor

Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy
and it is also the open window embedded in those bricks. — Shashi Tharoor

I have been a frequent air traveler since I was a few months shy of my sixth birthday, when my parents packed me off to boarding school two plane rides away from home. Those days of being willingly handed from air hostess to air hostess as an 'unaccompanied minor' made me blase about the rigors of air travel. — Shashi Tharoor

The good terrorists are the guys who bomb and kill Indians. The bad terrorists are the ones who attack Pakistani interests, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan. In other words, you blow up the Taj Mahal Hotel, you are a good guy. You blow up the Marriott in Islamabad, you are a bad guy. — Shashi Tharoor

Because so many voters happen to be illiterate, India invented the party symbol, so that voters who could not read the name of their candidate could vote for him or her anyway by recognizing the symbol under which they campaigned. — Shashi Tharoor

An India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us. This would be a second Partition: and a partition in the Indian soul would be as bad as a partition in the Indian soil. For my sons, the only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts. An India neither Hindu nor Muslim, but both. That is the only India that will allow them to continue to call themselves Indians. — Shashi Tharoor

A weak, insecure nation needs sporting heroes, players larger than life on the cricketing field, who can transcend the limitations of their country and team. — Shashi Tharoor

The Indian tricolour was raised just before sunset, and as it fluttered up the flagpole a late-monsoon rainbow emerged behind it, a glittering tribute from the heavens. — Shashi Tharoor

We carry with us the weight of the past, and because we do not have a finely developed sense of history and historicism, it is a past that is still alive in our present. We wear the dust of history on our foreheads, and the mud of the future on our feet. — Shashi Tharoor

Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, American movies, American music, and dislike the policies of the government of America. — Shashi Tharoor

When I grew up in India, telephones were a rarity. In fact, they were so rare that elected members of Parliament had the right to allocate 15 telephone lines as a favor to those they deemed worthy. If you were lucky enough to be a wealthy businessman or an influential journalist, or a doctor or something, you might have a telephone. — Shashi Tharoor

While he was alive, he was impossible to ignore; once he had gone, he was impossible to imitate. — Shashi Tharoor

A witticism in an airport security line is like a Swiss tap - turn it on, and you instantly find yourself in hot water. — Shashi Tharoor

The roots of India's soft power run deep. India's is a civilization that, over millennia, has offered refuge and, more importantly, religious and cultural freedom, to Jews, Parsis, several varieties of Christians, and Muslims. — Shashi Tharoor

One American newspaper wholesaler told The New York Times that the Indians basically replaced the old Jewish and Italian merchants and they've filled a tremendous void because nobody will put in the fourteen and sixteen-hour days that they do quite willingly and that you have to put in when running a newsstand. — Shashi Tharoor

On election days, the burdens of poverty and corruption and of a creaky economic system are put aside, and India celebrates. Many voters dress especially for the occasion ... None quite voice the thought, but those who came in a steady stream to vote seemed to be saying that India may have fallen far behind its neighbors in the struggle for prosperity, but as long as it can choose its governments, it can hope for better in the future. — Shashi Tharoor

The ISI may well be Pakistan's answer to the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, Roman nor an empire: it — Shashi Tharoor

If China wants to build a new six-lane expressway, it can bulldoze its way past any number of villages in its path; in India, if you want to widen a two-lane road, you could be tied up in court for a dozen years over compensation entitlements. — Shashi Tharoor

Going abroad to study as a teenager, and joining the United Nations at 22, confirmed my ease with the world of the frequent flyer. I saw the average airport terminal as a familiar haven, like a friend's sitting room. But 9/11 changed all that. — Shashi Tharoor

India ... was like an ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously ... Though outwardly there was diversity and infinite variety among our people, everywhere there was that tremendous impress of oneness, which had held all of us together for ages ... [India] was a world in itself, a culture and a civilization which gave shape to all things. Foreign influences poured in ... and were absorbed. Disruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to an attempt to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of belief and custom was practiced and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged. — Shashi Tharoor

Hindu fundamentalism," because Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals: no organized church, no compulsory beliefs or rites of worship, no single sacred book. The name itself denotes something less, and more, than a set of theological beliefs. In many languages - French and Persian amongst them - the word for "Indian" is "Hindu." Originally "Hindu" simply meant the people beyond the river Sindhu, or Indus. But the Indus is now in Islamic Pakistan; and to make matters worse, the word "Hindu" did not exist in any Indian language till its use by foreigners gave Indians a term for self-definition. — Shashi Tharoor

In China, national priorities are established by the Government and then funded by the state; in India, priorities emerge from seemingly endless discussions and arguments amongst myriad interests, and funds have to be found where they might. — Shashi Tharoor

The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans. — Shashi Tharoor

Five decades ago, as India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, began visibly ailing, the nation and the world were consumed by the question: 'After Nehru, who?' The inexpressible fear lay in the subtext to the question: 'After Nehru, what?' — Shashi Tharoor

Sometimes a rut can be a comfortable place to be, but ours was full of too many differences and resentments to be wholly comfortable. I had always had my own way in the marriage - about what we'd do, where we'd do it, when, how. Katharine had always argued, and always given in. In the process she'd become more resentful, I guess, except that I was too busy with my own work to notice. But in turn she was less and less appealing to me. She's a couple of years older than me, I guess you know that, but that wasn't all. Those stolid American middle-class values, her sensible clothes, her sense of responsibility, her moderation in all things - frankly, they bored me. We made love less and less, and she didn't even seem to miss it. I did. — Shashi Tharoor

In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood. — Shashi Tharoor

I believe in an India of pluralism and diversity, not of religious bigotry and caste politics. I believe in an India that is secure in itself and confident of its place in the world, an India that is a proud example of tolerance, freedom and hope for the downtrodden. — Shashi Tharoor

Europe's history of trading relations with India is borne out in the writings of the ancient historians Herodotus, Pliny, Petronius and Ptolemy, and — Shashi Tharoor

I am proud to represent the capital of Kerala, a state that in so many ways is a trailblazer for India's progress, though in other respects it seems to have been left behind in the race for 21st century development. — Shashi Tharoor

As someone once said about water pollution, we all live downstream. We are all interconnected, and we can no longer afford the luxury of not thinking about the rest of the planet in anything we do. — Shashi Tharoor

The closest Indian analogy to the position of black Americans is that of the Dalits - formerly called 'Untouchables,' the outcastes who for millennia suffered humiliating discrimination and oppression. — Shashi Tharoor

Malaysians talk with Mauritians, Arabs with Australians, South Africans with Sri Lankans, and Iranians with Indonesians. The Indian Ocean serves as both a sea separating them and a bridge linking them together. — Shashi Tharoor

It's not the side of the bigger army that wins. It's the country that tells a better story. — Shashi Tharoor

India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay. — Shashi Tharoor

What economic libralisation needs, if it is to succeed , is a general acceptance that reforms are for the general good, that they might seem to help some more than others, but that in the long run everyone will benefit from them. Such attitude is far from being realized — Shashi Tharoor

There is not a thing as the wrong place, or the wrong time. We are where we are at the only time we have. Perhaps it's where we're meant to be. — Shashi Tharoor

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it. — Shashi Tharoor

Universality of the UN is a worthwhile thing in its own self because it means that every country belongs, feels it has a stake, and participates, rather than going away and finding other methods of conducting international relations. — Shashi Tharoor

Muslim sociologists and anthropologists have argued that Islam in rural India is more Indian than Islamic, in the sense that the faith as practiced by the ordinary Muslim villagers reflects the considerable degree of cultural assimilation that has occurred between Hindus and Muslims in their daily lives. — Shashi Tharoor

This is the one international institution we have in which governments get together to work collectively for a common purpose. International crises, by definition, require international solutions. Peacekeeping is a response to conflict, is a response to situations in which often it is not the business of any one particular country to get into. It seems to me, therefore, that the world will for the foreseeable future need peacekeeping. — Shashi Tharoor

The episode of the 'shoe bomber,' Richard Reid, has suddenly meant more feet being bared at airports than at the average Hindu temple. My solution has been to replace my customary lace-up Oxfords with a pair of slip-on loafers when I fly. Generals are always fighting the last war, and security screeners are the same. — Shashi Tharoor

history is neither for excuses nor for revenge 1. — Shashi Tharoor

The Chinese, as befits a Communist autocracy, approached the task of dominating the Olympics with top-down military discipline. — Shashi Tharoor

Whereas China has set about systematically striving for Olympic success since it re-entered global competition after years of isolation, India has remained complacent about its lack of sporting prowess. — Shashi Tharoor

On Gandhi: Don't ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with his feet on the ground. — Shashi Tharoor

(Indeed there were outstanding examples of good governance in India at the time, notably the Travancore kingdom, which in 1819 became the — Shashi Tharoor

The fact that Nehru had risked his life to save a single Moslem had a profound effect far beyond New Delhi. Many thousands of Moslems who had intended to flee to Pakistan now stayed in India, staking their lives on Nehru's ability to protect them and assure them justice. In — Shashi Tharoor

The naval expansionism of the southern Chola and Pallava empires took Indian influences directly to Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia and Cambodia. Later, — Shashi Tharoor

I returned to India because I believe in an India of honesty and hard work, not of corruption and crookedness. I believe in an India of openness and straightforwardness, not of hypocrisy and double-dealing. I believe in an India where opportunities are available to all, and not just to a chosen few. — Shashi Tharoor

If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali
a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast. — Shashi Tharoor

Terrorism is a principal preoccupation in most of our international contacts. — Shashi Tharoor

The British did little, very little, of such things. They basked in the Indian sun and yearned for their cold and fog-ridden homeland; they sent the money they had taken off the perspiring brow of the Indian worker to England; and whatever little they did for India, they ensured India paid for it in excess. And at the end of it all, they went home to enjoy their retirements in damp little cottages with Indian names, their alien rest cushioned by generous pensions supplied by Indian taxpayers. The — Shashi Tharoor

Personally, I am far from convinced that the British system is suited to India. The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a unique breed of legislator, largely unqualified to legislate, who has sought election only in order to wield (or influence) executive power. It has produced governments obliged to focus more on politics than on policy or performance. It has distorted the voting preferences of an electorate that knows which individuals it wants but not necessarily which policies. It has spawned parties that are shifting alliances of individual interests rather than the vehicles of coherent sets of ideas. It has forced governments to concentrate less on governing than on staying in office, and obliged them to cater to the lowest common denominator of their coalitions. It is time for a change. Pluralist — Shashi Tharoor

India has been born and reborn scores of times, and it will be reborn again. India is forever, and India is forever being made. — Shashi Tharoor

crushes the adventurous, the brave, the sensitive, and encourages the timid, the opportunist and time-serving, the sneak and the bully. It surrounds itself with — Shashi Tharoor

Among the many international consequences of Barack Obama's stunning victory in the United States is worldwide introspection about whether such a breakthrough could happen elsewhere. Could a person of color win power in other white-majority countries? — Shashi Tharoor

No one says "Gee Whiz!" very much these days, of course, not even in America - both because that expression has long since been supplanted by others more colourful and less printable, and because our capacity for surprise has long since been dulled by a surfeit of sources. — Shashi Tharoor

The principles he stood for and the way in which he asserted them were always easier to admire than to follow. — Shashi Tharoor

A highly developed country of the past, in an advanced state of decay). — Shashi Tharoor

Above all, Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire' is the work of an artist at the peak of his powers. India is his palette, and Mumbai - that teeming 'maximum city', with 19 million strivers on the make, jostling, scheming, struggling and killing for success - is his brush. — Shashi Tharoor

Great discoveries, Ganapathi, are often the result of making the wrong mistake at the right time. — Shashi Tharoor

The Mahabharata declares, 'What is here is nowhere else; what is not here, is nowhere. — Shashi Tharoor

My China Diary and Walking With Lions, were memoirs of his diplomatic and political experiences. The — Shashi Tharoor

India is more than a sum of its contradictions, any truism about India can be contradicted with another truism. There is no fixed stereotype. But even thinking about India makes clear the immensity of the nation-building challenge. — Shashi Tharoor

The U.N. guards the vital principles entrenched in its charter, notably the sovereign equality of states and the inadmissibility of interference in their internal affairs. It is precisely because the U.N. is the chief guardian of both these sacrosanct principles that it alone is allowed to approve derogations from them. — Shashi Tharoor

but as an Indian, I find it far easier to forgive than to forget. — Shashi Tharoor

We have no word for "Nation" in our language. — Shashi Tharoor

I returned to India after long years of international service, because I had always cherished the desire to make a difference in my own country. — Shashi Tharoor

Gangaji's truth required activism, not passivity. — Shashi Tharoor

They say every dog has its day, Ganapathi, but for this terrier twilight came before tea-time. — Shashi Tharoor

Indian democracy has often been likened to the stately progress of the elephant - ponderous in its gait and reluctant to change course, but not easily swayed from its new path when it does. — Shashi Tharoor

If you believe in truth and cared enough to obtain it, you had to be prepared actively to suffer for it. — Shashi Tharoor

The combination of internal controls and international protectionism gave India a distorted economy, underproductive and grossly inefficient, making too few goods, of too low a quality, at too high a price. The resultant stagnation led to snide comments about what Indian economist Raj Krishna called the "Hindu rate of growth," which averaged some 3.5 percent in the first three decades after independence (or, to be more exact, between 1950 and 1980) when other countries in Southeast Asia were growing at 8 to 15 percent or even more. — Shashi Tharoor

I'm not a techno-determinist. I believe we need to improve our existing human resources, and technology can only be a complement. — Shashi Tharoor

The abrupt and sudden death of my wife has taken a severe emotional and psychic toll on me. On top of that, some people have stooped so low that they have tried to use my personal tragedy for their personal benefit. — Shashi Tharoor

Rabindranath Tagore put it gently to a Western audience in New York in 1930: 'A great portion of the world suffers from your civilisation.' Mahatma Gandhi was blunter: asked what he thought of Western civilization, he replied, 'It would be a good idea'. 'The — Shashi Tharoor

Hinduism as a faith might espouse tolerance, this does not necessarily mean that all Hindus behave tolerantly. — Shashi Tharoor

In writing of Indian culture, I am highly conscious of my own subjectivity; arguably, there is more than one Indian culture, and certainly more than one view of Indian culture. — Shashi Tharoor

Jawaharlal Nehru's first Cabinet list set a standard that would never again be matched, while establishing a precedent for diversity that all his successors would strive to emulate. A — Shashi Tharoor

There was a time when bright people had few prospects for higher education and good jobs here. But that is changing. India is no longer seen as an undesirable place to work or pursue research. — Shashi Tharoor

As an Indian, and now as a politician and a government minister, I've become rather concerned about the hype we're hearing about our own country, all this talk about India becoming a world leader, even the next superpower. — Shashi Tharoor

Why does man need bread? To survive. But why survive if it is only to eat more bread? To live is more than just to sustain life - it is to enrich, and be enriched by, life. — Shashi Tharoor

The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts. — Shashi Tharoor

I don't go by my caste, creed or religion. My works speak for me. — Shashi Tharoor

Everything is recycled in India, even dreams. — Shashi Tharoor